


A Very Collared Xmas

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [25]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Gladstone's Collar, Guitar Man, Kidfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-12
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-20 23:07:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/590682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of Xmas fics set in the Guitar Man universe. Just a few to send us off towards the New Year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Few of our Favourite Things

At the age of four, Sherrinford Holmes decided that since Christmas was a time when you gave presents to people you liked, he should get presents for the people he liked. At that age, though, he didn’t really have pocket money, and he didn’t want to just buy shop things anyway. Shop things were not unique. Shop things were boring. So he put his four year old brain on the issue and snuck around the various houses in which he visited and then asked his Mummy to help him pick up a few supplies. A few shop things were necessary after all, but Ford had _plans._

For a four year old, Ford Holmes had a very well developed artistic sense. He had done stick figures for about a week when he was three and had barrelled right on with the art phase that involved piling circles and ovals together to draw his family (with two daddies, a mummy, a daddy-Sherlock’s-best-friend, best-friend-John’s little girl Violet, Violet’s two mummies and daddy-Sherlock’s-landlady-grandma; a picture that confused the hell out of his first kindy teacher a few years down the track.)

IN any case, with artistic skills more aligned with those of the average ten year old, and the thought that it was nice to draw pictures of people’s favourite things, this is what four-year-old Ford made for his family.

Ford drew orange and black bees all over a fresh white cotton T-shirt for Sherlock. John got a similar T-shirt, in his own size of course, covered in cobalt blue guitars. (Both men wore the garments until the cotton was ragged and the armpits were mostly holes. Now retired to Sussex, Sherlock doesn’t think John knows that Sherlock still has the remnants of the thing in the back of his drawer. Sherlock of course knows that John still has the last rags of the guitar shirt packed carefully away with his medals at the bottom of his old army trunk.)

Ford, running with this idea of ‘favourite things’ drew a picture of Mummy and a cake on Daddy’s shirt and a picture of Daddy and a cake on Mummy’s shirt. Ford had observed that his parents had a sweet tooth, especially for cupcakes with cream cheese icing. He has no idea why Mummy seemed to blush and Daddy, who always knows what to say, looked like he had no idea what to say for a minute, but they laughed so much and hugged him so hard, he knew it was all right. Then they looked at each other with twinkly eyes, which made Ford very happy. (Mycroft and Sally still have their shirts too, less worn than the ones that went to Baker Street. When Ford went to Mars to work on the terraforming project, Sally made the shirts into little pillows. More than once she’s found Mycroft in the sun room, one or both pillows in his lap, stroking his fingers over the soft fabric as he ruminates on his daily tasks.)

Mary and Nirupa got T-shirts too. Mary’s had a picture of a big purple bridge on it, covered in swings, birds and streamers. Ford had never seen the things that Mary built first hand, but he knew that she built things, that she loved building things, that she thought building things was fun and that building things made other people happy too. A purple bridge covered in streamers, parrots and playground equipment was the funnest sort of thing he could think of. Nirupa’s shirt was covered in the word ‘happy’ in fourteen different languages. Daddy had helped a lot with that one. Ford was already picking up a little Hindi from the chef and some Polish from the gardener, but he could only write in English so far. (Mary and Nirupa still have those shirts, too, threadbare though they are, which they wear as pyjamas in hot climates.)

Even at four, Ford could see that Mrs Hudson was not really a T-shirt kind of lady. For her, he painted a white ceramic cup with bursts of colourful flowers and a giant orange sun up near the handle. When he gave it to her, he said it was for her kitchen. He couldn’t yet articulate the idea that her kitchen was, to him, like sunshine and gardens. (When, years later, that cup was smashed by a foul-tempered bookbinder with a grudge against Sherlock, Mrs H cried. After beaning the bastard with a tea tray, of course. John patiently glued the poor cup back together, and Mrs H now grows a little African Violet in the thing. The makeshift planter and its little flower reside in her private bathroom at her retirement residence.)

Violet was five, and already a Very Special Friend, when Ford did his first Christmas gift-giving. Violet didn’t just get a T-shirt. Violet got a shirt covered in orange smiley faces, a bit like the one on Sherlock’s wall. And she got a pair of socks, with a picture of Sherlock and John on the left sock and a picture of Mary and Nirupa on the right sock. And she got a captain’s hat made out of the chauffeur’s old hat with orange braid glued in profusion around the crown, because she liked to be behind the wheel, as it were, although he often gave her directions. Ford didn’t think of it in those terms, of course. He just thought she’d like a captain’s hat. (Violet of course grew out of the shirt and the socks, but she grew into the hat. The clothing vanished many years ago, but when Ford first went to Violet’s quarters on the Mars base, he found that ridiculous hat sitting on a wig dummy next to her mirror. A lot of the braid had come off so it was now mostly just a chauffeur’s hat. But she put it on his head with a playful laugh while she was showing him her tiny quarters, and it had migrated back to her head by the time they were both naked, sweaty, panting and giddy with joy on the fold-down bed.)

 Let’s face it. Ford Holmes, even at four, was a canny little genius.


	2. You May Grow Up to Be a Fish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the end of Collared, John won a goldfish for Sherlock at a shooting gallery at the fair. Sherlock named the fish Archimedes before anyone else could christen it Mycroft. Archimedes hasn't featured in any stories since then, but he was there for many of them. Goldfish can live a long time. Up to twenty years. Archimedes, despite expectations to the contrary, lived a long time and saw a lot of Christmases at Baker Street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loreena McKennits sings a beautiful version of the actual Wexford Carol here on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG6vOASt2RU

Despite all the excitement at the end of the Chingford Plains fete, which included the dance-off and Sherlock getting all insecure about the arrival of Mary Morstan, Archimedes the Fish made it home in his plastic bag.

John found a large beaker and ensured it was completely devoid of chemicals before filling it with water, a collection of glass marbles that Sherlock had bought for some arcane reason and never used and Archimedes himself. The beaker was placed right beside the skull on their mantelpiece. Later, a small plant was added.

And then, against all the odds, that fish lived the lifespan of a well-cared for goldfish. Fifteen years.

Sherlock used Archimedes to teach the children about the principles of displacement, about algae, about water temperature and fish health (which once, honest-to-god, helped him solve a crime) and the life cycles of brine shrimp (and that they were not, nor had they ever been, any kind of sea monkey). Despite all the distractions of his life, Sherlock cared for that fish assiduously.

In fact, if ever any of their clients ever commented on the fish (trying to fill in uncomfortable silences, as often as not) Sherlock would tell them, almost dismissively (but with a slight note of pride) that Doctor Watson had won the fish at a shooting gallery (and for some of their visitors, he would emphasise the word ‘shooting’ with a certain warning-laden relish) and that the client was an idiot if they thought commenting on the fish was going to distract Sherlock from the fact they were panicking/lying/stalling for time/afraid for their lives.

John used to decorate Archimedes’ beaker for Christmas, tying a length of gold tinsel around its rim and, once, lowering an aquarium-approved model of a Christmas tree into the water and anchoring it in the marbles. Archimedes investigated it, found it harmless and swam circles around it for the whole of Christmas.

A Christmas tree in his beaker-tank was not the oddest thing Archimedes saw in fifteen years at Baker Street. He hadn’t a clue what any of it meant, of course. He was just a fish. But he was there, all the same.

He saw the night that an assassin crept into the flat and tried to suffocate Sherlock Holmes with a pillow, only to find _two_ men in that bed, neither of them asleep due to the recurrence of nightmares, which threw a massive spanner into his tactical approach. Consequently Archimedes watched the wicked man learn the error of his ways via a sound thrashing and vow never to underestimate the small, angry one ever again.

Archimedes was there the night Sherlock brought John back from six hours in Emergency and proceed to yell at John until Sherlock could hardly talk any more. John apologised in a way that wasn’t really an apology and Sherlock stared at him for a good long while before saying: “Was that what it felt like, when you watched me fa…”. John interrupted before Sherlock could finish, not with a word but with a _look._ And Sherlock had dropped to the sofa, all the fight gone out of him. “How did you ever forgive me?” And John had stretched, Sherlock-like, on the sofa, head in Sherlock’s lap, and said up into that solemn face: “You weren’t actually dead. You gave me my miracle. How could I not?” Sherlock had placed his long, large hand on the top of John’s head, as though patting him then thinking better of it, and said: “Well. You’re not actually dead. So I forgive you.”

Archimedes was there the day Mary told John she was pregnant, and he was there the Christmas Day that John got on his knees in front of his lover and sang Christmas songs to her rounded belly, which made Mary laugh and John grinned adoringly up at her. Archimedes also saw what they didn’t, which was Sherlock pausing on the way into the flat via the kitchen doorway, overhearing John say to Mary: “How did I get here? How did I get to have all of this? You and the baby and Sherlock and this whole life” and he heard Mary reply: “Because you deserve it, John. You deserve every lovely thing” and John laughed like he didn’t believe it but was glad that Mary did. Sherlock’s fingertips, paused in the act of reaching to remove his scarf, brushed the fabric that overlay his heart instead, and although he didn’t smile, his eyes softened, and he silently went downstairs to visit Mrs Hudson.

Archimedes saw fifteen Christmases, which meant he saw the night John Watson and Mrs Hudson get silly-drunk on her brandy-with-pudding-in-it. He saw the night Sherlock sang a fretful baby Violet to sleep when she and John both had colds. He saw the night Sherlock practically chased John around the flat while John kept trying to hide Sherlock’s Christmas present, which ended up with them both standing at the window, covered in eggs and flour, looking like the Ghosts of Christmas Deranged, singing The Wexford Carol (accompanied by violin and guitar, but with completely new lyrics) to unsuspecting passers-by in the small hours of Christmas Eve. (The pair of them blamed that whole fiasco on the brandy-with-pudding-in-it too, but they were stone cold sober, just on a post-case, can’t-believe-we’re-not-dead high. The first verse went: _Good people all, this Christmas-time,  
Consider well and bear in mind, What this Detective here has done, Deducing where Cray hid the gun. With Mary Morstan we should pray, To Greg Lestrade this Christmas day; In Baker Street upon that morn, That this case rated at least a nine_. They certainly sounded like they were drunk when they sang it.)

Archimedes saw little five-year-old Sherrinford Holmes explaining to the Christmas Eve client that of course he was excited about Christmas, but not about Santa, who didn’t exist, but about the chemistry set he was getting from Sherlock and _why is it sad I don’t believe in Santa? People shouldn’t lie to their kids it sets a bad example, Daddy says, and why are you mad now?_

Archimedes was there for John’s first Christmas as a father and his first as an orphan too (so what if he was in his forties, once both parents are dead, that is what you are, isn’t it?). He was there when Mrs Hudson made Sherlock play Mistletoe and Wine on his violin (after first plying him with that trademarked brandy and brandy and brandy and Christmas pudding), and when Molly Hooper and Greg Lestrade announced their engagement.

He saw Sherlock planning escapology games to amuse all of the children one year and how he made John test them first. He saw how John managed to get out of four of the five. The fifth one he got stuck in and Sherlock made him stay that way until he could find his own way out, because, _really John, this has been designed for **children**_ , and then Archimedes saw John set fire to the ropes and then the Christmas tree in his efforts to escape and how Sherlock had to put the tree out with a fire extinguisher (John had managed to escape by then and was swearing until the air was bruised). Sherlock did not apologise. Sherlock rolled his eyes a lot, in fact. Archimedes was also witness to the sixteen attempts John made to lace Sherlock’s tea and coffee with laxatives/sedatives/stuff to make urine green, ten of which succeeded. If fish had a sense of humour, Archimedes would have laughed himself a new gill that year.

Archimedes saw fifteen Christmases and all the times in between, and he’d have a hell of a tale to tell. If fish could remember stories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The full version of John and Sherlock's rewritten Wexford Carol refers to a case they solved one Christmas Eve for a Chief Inspector Fleet, who was not a fan of Holmes. It involved a dead dog trainer, a substituted prize Saluki hound, a drag queen called Cray Del Snatcha, eighteen metres of Christmas trim, a bullet lodged in the trunk of an artificial Christmas tree and a toxic suet pudding, otherwise known as Spotted Dick. Yes, really.
> 
> The Wexford Carol (John and Sherlock’s version)
> 
> Good people all, this Christmas-time,  
> Consider well and bear in mind  
> What this Detective here has done  
> Deducing where Cray hid the gun.  
> With Mary Morstan we should pray  
> To Greg Lestrade this Christmas day;  
> In Baker Street upon that morn  
> That this case rated at least a nine. 
> 
> The night following that happy tide  
> The noble Doctor and his guide  
> Were long time seeking up and down  
> To find the drag queen in the red gown.  
> But mark how all things came to pass;  
> They found Cray fallen on his arse  
> As Holmes foretold, the evidence  
> He’d thrown behind a graveyard fence. 
> 
> Thank London’s black ice and Cray’s heels   
> That made him lose his even keel,  
> And also thank his perfume spray  
> Which led us to downed Mr Cray,  
> But t’was the mark on churchyard bell  
> Showed Sherlock where the pistol fell,  
> We gloating cast it at the feet,  
> Of doubting Chief, that bastard Fleet.


	3. Mark How All Things Come to Pass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John Watson had the Worst Christmas when he was 14. He got so drunk after the Second Worst Christmas he was violently ill for three days. You'd think that after those two traumatic episodes, John Watson wouldn't have much time for Christmas. But oh, there are better Christmases to come. A lifetime of Best Christmases Ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is a lyric from The Wexford Carol

 

When John Watson was small, he loved Christmas, the way all kids love Christmas. Some Christmases were better than others of course, and the Watsons had their share of yuletide drama.  But on the whole, Watson family Christmases were fine and even fun. They’d have roast dinners with all the trimmings. John’s mother would play the guitar and they’d sing carols, then they’d watch the TV Christmas specials and the Queen’s Christmas Message. John’s Dad was a bit gruff and sometimes drank a bit much, but he loved his wife’s singing as much as anybody, and he loved his kids in that awkward British way where he failed utterly to find a way to express it. They were ordinary Christmases really, but when you’re a kid all Christmases are a little bit magic.

And then Fiona Watson died in a stupid, stupid car crash and the next Christmas was the Worst Christmas. That Christmas there was drinking and fighting, and John hid in his room after he got punched by his Dad for trying to play his mother’s guitar and sing her favourite carol. Harry and their Dad screamed at each other. John stayed awake all night and listened to his father swearing, then sobbing, then snoring. It was the bloodied, ragged remnants of a family. There was a hole in their home and John learned in no uncertain terms that it would never, ever be filled, and certainly not by him.

John got used to it. He endured it. He spent Christmas Day in his room. Sometimes he’d sing. Once, he cried, but that was no use and didn’t change anything so he didn’t cry again after that. When he was old enough and had formed his band, he’d accept Christmas Eve gigs for Gladstone’s Collar and stay overnight in whatever pub had booked them. He got spectacularly drunk once, and yelled at a barmaid, and was so disgusted with himself, and was so afraid of turning into his father, it was a very long time before he drank too much again.

At medical school, he’d work through the holiday, and always took the holiday shifts when interning. In the army, too, he was fine with working Christmas. Someone had to, after all. It was all fine. He didn’t hate Christmas, really. It just all seemed a bit pointless. Something nice for other people, but it wasn’t for him. He’d once spent a very peaceful Christmas in Cairo, in fact. A few decorations around, for the tourists mainly, but it was hot and dry and not at all like Christmas at home, and the Coptics had their orthodox celebrations in January.

Then he was shot, and invalided home, and things were very, very bad. And then there was Sherlock and Baker Street, and things were a lot better. Sherlock despising Christmas made John feel more mellow about it, actually, and he laughed at himself for being so damned contrary. But Sherlock playing Christmas melodies on his violin didn’t make him flinch the way carols used to, and Sherlock even apologised to Molly for being such a dick, and John even managed to spend part of the next day with Harry without things getting too bitter and mean. That evening, John had discovered Sherlock playing the Wexford Carol. His mother’s favourite. For a moment, John had felt indescribably, inescapably nauseated. He broke out in a cold sweat. Then he got his guitar and, despite fumbling with the first few bars, he found the music again, and he and Sherlock played it together. He felt closer to his mother that afternoon than he had felt in the 25 years since he’d lost her.

And then there had been Moriarty, and the Fall, and the Year in Hell, and the Second Worst Christmas that left John such a drunken, broken mess.

By the time Christmas came around that year, John knew that Sherlock was alive. He and Mrs Hudson and Mycroft sat their vigil by Mrs Hudson’s phone and felt useless and raw with the knowledge.

That was the Christmas Harry phoned to tell John their father had had a stroke. Her manner of telling John this news was to hurl drunken, swearing abuse down the line at him, about how John had not once visited their Dad in the nursing home. About how John had not once even contributed to the costs. About how Dad’s stroke was all John’s fault.

It was true John had not visited their father. They had not spoken in ten years. The last time John had tried, before going on his first tour with the army, Jack Watson had made sure that his son knew that he thought John was worse than a fool for joining the army, that he was a weak and stupid boy if he thought the army made him a man or fit for anything, and that Jack was not interested in seeing John again, even if John managed not to get himself shot.

Then John had managed to get himself shot, and didn’t see the point in going to his father to show him just how useless he’d become. Then Sherlock happened, and he didn’t have time, and even when he had time, he just… couldn’t. John Watson had the strength for any number of things, but not for that.

The jibe about the costs wasn’t true, though. John had managed some assistance through the Army Family Health Care programme once his father had gone into permanent care. It wasn’t much, but then, John didn’t have much. He did what he could. What he couldn’t do was see his father.

But now Jack Watson had suffered a severe stroke which, according to Harry, was John’s fault for being such a magnificent fuck-up, who had been taken in and used by a fake genius. The stories in the papers, the disparagement and the naming of John Watson had driven their father to such extremes of rage that his failing system (led of course by his failing liver) had released a blood clot to the brain. That John had not published any kind of statement admitting he’d been fooled with the rest of them, admitting that his vaunted best friend had been just another psychopath, had been too much for the old man. He’d been shouting about it when the stroke happened.

John had let Harry yell herself hoarse, and then told her, in his calmest, clearest voice, that the old bastard’s foul temper was not his fault, that Sherlock was not a fake and that both Jack and Harry could go to hell. Then he hung up.

And then he’d taken himself off to see his father, because Jack Watson had had a massive stroke and could die, and John didn’t think he could live with himself if he didn’t at least try.

It was a mistake.

It turned out that, ill as Jack was, he was still capable of communicating after a fashion. Half of his face was slack and unresponsive, and the other half spewed forth bile and spittle. He took one look at John and he was off. What John understood of the tirade before he let the nurses push him out of the room included words like _disgrace_ and _ashamed_ and _useless fucking doctor_ , _useless fucking soldier getting shot_ and _fucking poofter bumboy_ and _that faggot psychopath_ and _no son of mine._

John didn’t expect sympathy from the staff, and didn’t get it.

He went home to Baker Street, refusing to answer a single call, especially the ones from Harry. He made a cup of tea and then threw it in sudden rage against the wall and watched the fluid drip into the sink. He snatched a beer from the fridge and drank it down in three swallows, then he drank a second, and a third. As he finished chugging the sixth of the pack, he went rooting around the cupboard for the scotch. He found scotch, a half bottle of vodka and some very nice port that had been a gift from a grateful client. He shoved the port back in the cupboard.

He polished off the vodka first, because it was so effective at making his brain nothing but white noise. Then he drank the scotch because he was still conscious, fuck it all to hell.

Mrs Hudson found John late on Christmas Eve, curled up in Sherlock’s chair, so drunk that he had no idea he was weeping inconsolably into the Union Jack pillow. The skull was cradled in his lap, between his drawn-up knees and his stomach.

When Mrs Hudson touched his arm, John swore at her and told her to _fuck off and leave me alone, just fuck off._ She gasped and drew back as though he’d hit her, and that was his final undoing. Without meaning to, he slid out of the chair, onto his knees on the floor, bent double over the skull, saying _sorry, sorry, sorry, fuck, fuck this, I can’t, I’m not, I’m … sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry._

His voice was the worst sound Mrs Hudson had ever heard in her life. And she had, in her long life, heard many terrible things.

She knelt beside him, despite her dodgy hip, and wrapped her arms around him and he fell, sort of slithered, sideways into her embrace. He tried to breathe properly, tried to remember how to do that, while she rubbed his back and refused to offer him platitudes.

John Watson was vilely ill for three days: throwing up, sweating, swearing (my god, the swearing) but he let Mrs Hudson tend him without directing any of the rage at her. He stopped feeling like he wanted to die and merely like he would like to be in a coma for a while on about the third day. Mrs Hudson told everyone he had the flu.

He never told Mrs Hudson what had happened that day, but she had picked up John’s phone while he was busy throwing up his spleen and other less vital internal organs, and listened to Harry’s apologies on his behalf. And then Mrs Hudson had given Harriet Watson an earful like Harry hadn’t had in 25 years.

Anyone would think that after all of this, John Watson would be well and truly over Christmas. That he would have nothing to do with it ever again.

But the next Christmas was the first of the Best Christmases. It was the first Christmas that Sherlock was back, and the band played at the Met’s family Christmas Day, where John and Sherlock played the Wexford Carol, and of course by then there was Mary too. That was also the Christmas Molly and Greg announced their engagement.

And the next Christmas, Molly and Greg’s twin boys, Chris and David, were fat and happy babies crawling around and making everybody laugh. Sherlock didn’t find them funny so much as strangely fascinating. He seemed to make a hobby of comparing their development, to see where one twin surpassed or differed from the other. Apart from their parents, Sherlock was the only one who could tell them apart that first year. John loved watching Sherlock with the boys. Hell, he still just loved watching Sherlock. Alive. Home. As maddening and as magnificent as ever.

That was the year they solved the case of the blue sapphire found in the dead goose, with its rich reward, and were paid what amounted to a giddy fortune for finding Lord Salter’s kidnapped son. It was the year John’s first book was published, the stories of which often had only nodding acquaintance with the absolute truth, but it was a best-seller and John ended up financially secure, thank you very much.

He used a chunk of the money to ensure his father was kept very comfortable in his last months. John never saw Jack Watson again. John was a good man, but there is still only so much a good man can take. Besides, he knew he’d only be going to say: _See, you were wrong. About me. About him. About everything_. And John wasn’t a small enough man to go out of his way to shove _I told you so_ in a dying man’s face.

The Christmas after that, Mary was pregnant and putting up with a lot of jokes about Round yon Morstan, and the year after that there was Sherrinford, and the precious joy that was Chloe Hooper Lestrade, when they’d come so close to losing both Chloe and Molly. Soon after there was Taddy’s Charlotte, and not long after that Nicola and then Teresa.

And there were many, many Best Christmases of children and cases and music and carols. Especially carols, because they didn’t make John flinch any more. Now, in the middle of biting winter, singing carols with his friends, playing the Wexford Carol with Sherlock, John feels the memory of his mother standing at his shoulder, singing with him in her gentle Scottish burr, and he feels warm.


	4. A Gift from Jack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John's father Jack passed away only months after Violet was born. But this Christmas, John's about to discover that even his father gave him gifts.

Violet ran her chubby little fingers over the photograph in her Daddy's photo album.

"Grandma's pretty," she said, "She has a pretty smile."

John smiled at his little girl, seeing an echo of his mother's smile in those small, rosy lips and the crinkle of her eyes.

"Grandpa has a nice smile too."

That made John blink. It had been a long time since he'd thought of his father's smile. Much longer, of course, since he'd seen it, and now that his father was dead, he'd never see it again. Just like Fiona Watson's smile, that of Jack Watson had passed long ago. Fiona had taken it with her when she died.

John frowned as he stared at the photograph, trying to see what his four year old daughter was seeing. Violet had asked about her grandparents, wondering why she didn't have any, and so John had pulled out the photo album, the only thing he had asked for from his father's effects. Harry had hesitated before giving him a stack of them. “For your kid,” she'd said, as though she was afraid of having a bad influence on the baby by even saying her name aloud, “In case you ever want her to know about them.”

"You think it's a nice smile?" John asked Violet uncertainly.

"Not in that picture," said Violet, waving at the picture of Jack glaring moodily at the camera, "This one. When he's looking at Grandma."

And it was true, John realised. In the photo, taken the Christmas John was ten, Jack was gazing at his wife in fond adoration, smiling at her as Fiona was saying something to the photographer.

John turned the pages, wondering if that forgotten smile was anywhere else in these pages. And yes. There. Harry's thirteenth birthday. Fiona Watson was lighting candles, mouth open wide – singing, no doubt. Harry was staring wide-eyed at her cake and John, eleven years old, was only half in the picture. But there was Jack Watson, eyes fixed on his wife, smiling.

John had forgotten that his father could ever look like that. All he could remember was a face red with drink and shouting.

People who knew John's history thought that John hated his father. Even Harry believed that. Not Sherlock, of course, but then Sherlock never took things on face value.

John didn’t really hate his father, but he hated what his father had become. He had hated the drinking, the obscenities, the vicious words. Jack had hit John Watson twice: once on the first Christmas following his mother's death when John had tried to bring her back, just a little, by playing her guitar and singing her favourite hymn; and once after he wrote _Empty House_ , John’s attempt to talk about the gaping hole she'd left in their lives. Jack thought the words meant John hadn't loved her, and had hit his boy with a bottle. Stitches had been necessary. John supposed his father had been sorry afterwards, but he'd never said anything.

Jack, John also supposed, never knew that _Call Me_ had been written for him and Harry. His father wouldn't have understood it, any more than Harry had when John tried to explain.

But John didn't hate Jack Watson. John had pitied his father, but mostly Jack made his son feel sad with a useless kind of compassion – because Jack Watson had loved his wife, and losing her broke him. It broke him into pieces and he never found a way to remake himself. From the day she died to the day Jack finally followed her, he was shards of himself. Those shards were sharp and often unkind. John had stopped reaching out because he’d only been cut, and the cutting hurt. He didn’t have to hate his father to be hurt by him.

"Why is Grandpa sad in this one?"

Violet had turned pages ahead and there was one of the few pictures taken after Fiona's death. John's eighteenth birthday, and Jack was staring at his son. John didn't think he'd ever seen the picture before. He wished it had remained unseen. Jack was staring at John where John couldn't see, and looking like his heart was breaking still.

The thing was, John was very much his mother's son, slight yet strong. His blue eyes were very like hers. His smile, too. Harry took after their father in height and build, as well as temperament, but John Watson was the image of Fiona Watson, in features and in heart.

"He misses Grandma," John said at last, "That's why."

"Poor Grandpa." Violet kissed her fingers then pressed her fingers to the photo.

John nuzzled his daughter's hair. Violet was a treasure. So like Mary but also, John realised, his heart swelling, so like the Grandma she'd never known. A loving and insightful soul. His mother, he realised, continued to give him gifts even though she was long gone.

For the first time in his life, John wondered what gifts his father might have given him that, in turn, he may have passed on to Violet. _Please, god, not the temper, or at least, if that, at least also Mum’s compassion, to offset it._

"Grandpa loves Grandma," announced Violet, and John was struck by her use of the present tense.

_Grandpa loves Grandma. Jack loves Fiona. Always and forever. The poor bastard._

In that moment, John realised what his father had given to him; the gift that could be a curse. To love deeply, abidingly, fully and without reservation. Loving like that can consume a person. It had consumed Jack, and destroyed him, because when it was taken away, he didn’t know how to be whole again.

But John had found a way to love like that without losing himself. If he was being honest, John thought, really, he’d spent a long time being cautious about opening himself to people like that. He’d held himself a little apart. He had many friends and acquaintances but by the time he’d returned from Afghanistan, no-one really close.

Until Sherlock. Sherlock himself was so all-or-nothing that John never stood a chance of being ambivalent (nor indeed had Sherlock been able to cultivate ambivalence about John). John had met Sherlock, and the floodgates had opened, first for Sherlock, and then for the friends and family that followed. Mrs Hudson, Greg, Molly, Mary, Nirupa, Tad, Ford. All of them loved, unconditionally and forever. Even Mycroft and Sally had found their way into that circle, though none were so near the centre of it as Sherlock and Mary and their children.

 But John was lucky, because his mother had given him gifts to temper a capacity to love so overwhelmingly. When she died, John was broken for a while, but not shattered. He had eventually been able to remake himself and keep everything she'd given to him, and he had still loved her even though she was no longer there to love him back. When Sherlock had vanished, apparently dead, John had been broken again for a while, but he remade himself once more. His mother and Sherlock had given him gifts of hope, of forgiveness, of music, of purpose, of compassion, and helped him to make a new life out of ashes.

Jack and Harry? They loved deeply and forever, and they broke, and then they stayed broken.

Well, _hell._

John flipped the album back to earlier pages, where Jack was smiling that adoring smile at Fiona.

"Your Grandpa," said John, "Loved Grandma very, very, very much."

Violet kissed her fingers again, pressing it to the plastic-shielded images of both her grandparents.

"Merry Christmas, Grandma. Merry Christmas, Grandpa." She repeated the greetings, delighted, apparently, to be saying their names aloud, even if they weren’t still around to hear.

John flipped the album forward, wondering if there were any more pictures of his parents as they used to be. Violet grabbed at one of the pages, wanting him to slow down so she could see. She thumped her hand emphatically on the page.

“It’s me!”

John blinked.

Blinked again. Two pictures were place carefully under the plastic shields. An ultrasound scan on the left, the picture of a newborn baby on the right. Both of Violet, of course. Violet had seen these photos of herself often enough to know they were of her, too.

He’d sent Jack the pictures, of course. He’d never heard a word in reply, although Harry had told him that the old bastard had thrown them in the bin. Maybe he’d retrieved them and asked a nurse to place them in the album. Surely if Harry had done it, she’d have told John.

Two months after Violet was born, Jack was dead. He’d never met his granddaughter. John had never been prepared to subject either Mary or Violet to the old man’s vitriol.

Below the picture of the two-day-old infant Violet was a note in Jack’s jagged handwriting.

 _Violet Watson._  
|John’s eyes.  
Fiona’s eyes.

“Daddy?”

John felt a little hand patting his face.

“Don’t be sad.”

“I’m not sad, baby girl,” said John, smiling and kissing her fingers, “I just miss them.”

Violet crawled to kneel in his lap and kiss his face, lots of tiny kisses that made John giggle.

“I miss them too,” said Violet, all seriousness, “I like their photos. Can I have one for my bag? And can I have one for Ford?”

“Not these ones,” said John, “I’ll make copies for you. Show me which ones you want.”

“The happy ones!” Violet slithered back down into his lap to show him the old Christmas photo, and then Harry’s birthday picture.

John kissed the top of her head, then gave in to the impulse to press his nose deep into her dark hair and inhale. Baby shampoo and child-sweat from running around all morning and a delicate sweetness all her own. His baby girl; his Violet.

“That tickles!”

“Sorry, baby girl.”

“Sing that song,” Violet demanded good naturedly, “Grandma’s Christmas song.”

John snuggled in close and began to sing softly in her ear:

_Good people all, this Christmas time  
Consider well and bear in mind_

“No, no,” said Violet firmly, “The other one. The funny one about the Queen and the maggot.”

John’s sudden laugh turned into a choking cough. God, Violet must have been awake last night when he and Mary were teaching that one to Sherlock. Sherlock was gleefully approving of such a non-Christmassy Christmas song, especially when he’d discovered that John’s mother had loved it. She’d had a wicked sense of humour, his Mum. John remembered, suddenly, hearing his mother and father singing it together along with the radio late one night, when John and Harry should both have been asleep. They’d been singing and laughing, his parents. Mere months before the crash. A happy memory he’d forgotten.

Violet was getting impatient. “It goes – WAS CHRISTMAS EVE BAAAAAAABE,” she sang at the top of her lungs, “IN THE DUNK TANK. LA LA OLD MAN, HE SAID SEE NOTHER ONE!”

John giggled into the top of his daughter’s head.

“No Daddy,” Violet admonished him, “Sing the bits!”

“They got cars big as bars, they got rivers of gold,” John obliged, “But the wind goes right through you, it’s no place for the old.”

And he sang his mother’s second favourite Christmas song for his daughter, feeling close to both his parents for the first time in forever, and hoped that Mary would think it was funny when she found out. And she _would_ find out. Violet was probably going to sing the whole damned thing for company on Christmas morning.

John squished Violet around the middle, hugging her close and they giggled together at the end of the song.

“ _Now_ let’s sing the pretty one,” said Violet, and they did.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fiona's second favourite Christmas song is of course [ Fairytale of New York ](http://youtu.be/j9jbdgZidu8) by the Pogues and Kirsty McColl.


	5. Collared/Carolled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Christmas Eve. Tad is good at clapping games. Molly juggles snow. Sherlock denies being a grumpy bum. But he may have to kill Tad Anderson in the new year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is it for A Very Collared Xmas - best wishes to the season for all those celebrating whatever it is you like to celebrate at this time of year.

That Christmas Eve, Greg, Sherlock and John had been talking shop – definitely a non-festive topic – for half an hour before they realised that some of their number were missing.

Charlotte and Mrs Hudson were still there, showing unexpected but intense interest. Mrs Hudson was rather naughtily amusing herself with the frustrated/fond/trying-to-be-patient look on Sherlock's face whenever she asked yet _another_ question about the whole ducks-in-the-Tube situation. (John kept looking at her, like he knew what she was up to but was waiting for Sherlock to catch on.) Charlotte genuinely still didn't understand how and why the ducks were supposed to result in a theft from the British Museum. She was inclined to blame Pregnancy Brain for her inability to follow the logic. Sherlock was inclined to blame Charlotte’s lack of incisive intellect, but refrained from saying so because John kept kicking him in the ankle when he tried.

However, on the third attempt to describe how the bad guy of the piece had captured and released a flock of ducks into the underground nearest the defunct Museum Station in order to induce British Rail to bring the trains to a standstill; and that was in order to leave the tunnels free so that they could use the disused station as an entry point to the museum... well, Sherlock's patience was wearing very thin and Charlotte thought that maybe she didn't really need to understand it after all, and that's when she noticed her husband was missing.

"Did anyone see where Tad went?"

Mary, who had been giggling along with Mrs Hudson because Sherlock _would_ insist on doing a sort of impersonation of one of the angry ducks who had attacked the would-be thief, noticed suddenly that Nirupa was also not among those present.

Molly, Greg noted, was also missing. Also, said John, Mycroft and Sally.

That was when they all heard the faint sound of chanting and clapping. Naturally, everyone went downstairs to investigate.

What they found, in the garage-come-rehearsal-room of the Hooper-Lestrade home, was a circle of children and three adults chanting what seemed to be a very complicated rhyme and performing an even more complicated series of claps and slaps on their own and each other's bodies. Periodically, the pattern of clapping would change, shifting between standard time and double time. The whole thing – rhymes and clapping and all – was led by Tad Anderson, going faster and faster and faster.

The lately arriving grown-ups crowded at the door to watch Tad, Nirupa, Sally and Molly laughing, clapping and chanting with Chris, David, Chloe, Ford, Violet and even two-year-old Nicola. Mycroft wasn’t chanting, but he was sitting between Ford and Molly, a studious look on his face, smoothly keeping up with the clapping choreography, no matter how fast it got.

_Sherlock Holmes and Greg Lestrade_  
 _were running down the street_  
 _looking for a burg-a-lar and_  
 _who should they meet?_  
 _Doc-tor what's on my face_  
 _A pimple or a wart?_  
 _Can Molly tell us if it weighs_  
 _a kilo and a_  
 _quarter past eleven_  
 _by the station Waterloo_  
 _I cross my legs and do a dance_  
 _Because I need the_  
 _Loose change for the telephone_  
 _I need to call a guide_  
 _To tell me what do about a man who has_  
 _Dyed his hair orange and_  
 _Dyed his beard green_  
 _That Sherlock is the strangest man_  
 _That I’ve ever seen!_

At the end of it, a cheer rose up and Violet, seeing Sherlock in the doorway, jumped up and ran to him. She flung herself around his waist and beamed up at him. “Uncle Tad made up a song about you and Daddy and Greg and Molly.”

“I noticed,” said Sherlock quellingly, glaring at Tad. Tad raised an eyebrow back at him and refused to be cowed.

“Don’t be a grumpy-bum,” admonished the seven year old Violet sternly, “It’s a funny song and he made up the clapping too, and it was hard. Harder than the ones the kids do at school.”

Tad jerked his chin up a bit proud-defiantly at that, because all the kids and even the adults had been able to keep up with the clever syncopation, though it had taken them a couple of goes.

Sherlock’s glare narrowed to an assessing scowl. Yes, the clapping patterns had been quite complex, for a children’s game. It took a bit of effort to keep Ford engrossed in games like that, and he and Mycroft had in fact both seemed to have been engaged in the exercise. _Mycroft._ Good lord.

“Don’t start, Grumpy-Bum,” said John with a wicked grin.

“I am not a Grumpy Bum,” said Sherlock grumpily.

“Yes you are,” disagreed Violet cheerfully, “A dreadful Grumpy-Bum.”

Sherlock scowled at Mycroft, who was not trying very hard not to laugh

“And now,” said Molly, intervening in the latent Family War, “It’s time to go carolling.”

“That is not going to make me less grumpy,” huffed Sherlock.

“Yes it is,” said Violet, “Because you love playing songs with Daddy, even when you don’t really like the songs.”

Sherlock had to give her points for observation, he supposed, even when it was to his disadvantage.

“Come on!” She dashed back into the rehearsal room to fetch his violin, left there earlier in the evening for this very purpose. He really wasn’t fooling anyone.

“Right!” said Greg, grinning, “Coats on! It’s cold out there!”

Molly made sure her kids were rugged up tight while Sally supervised Ford’s methodical donning of winter gear. Violet, once John had fixed her own woolly hat and gloves, turned to make sure Ford’s scarf was wrapped tight and overwrapped it so that only his big, brown eyes were showing over the wool. His eyes were crinkled, like he was giggling under all the layers, and Violet was giggling right back at him. The large swarm of parents belonging to the two of them grinned indulgently at their antics. Tad and Charlotte made sure Nicola was wrapped up like an over-enthusiastic silkworm cocoon, and they all went out into the chill early Christmas Eve to the little park at the end of the street where Greg and Molly lived.

The neighbourhood square was adorned with fairy lights and a brightly decorated Christmas tree. Some people were in the park admiring the decorations, others were cutting through the square on their way home. When the little band of carollers began to sing everyone came to listen. They drew people out from their homes, and lured them from the footpaths where they passed.

These carollers came every year, the neighbourhood knew. It wasn’t anything official, but every year, without fail, there they were: that nice policeman and his sweet wife and their odd collection of family and friends. The folk around here were very fond of their own little Christmas tradition.

For the next hour, Collared and their collective family sang carols, Sherlock on the violin, Tad keeping time with a little egg-sized maraca, songs ranging from _Little Town of Bethlehem_ to _Let it Snow!_

Even Mycroft took part, though Sally, knowing full well that she was tone deaf, settled for clapping along in the more energetic songs. She and Charlotte started some funny little dance movements, involving clapping and the waving of hands, and some of the audience copied them, while others joined in the songs.

It had, against all probability, snowed during the afternoon, so in a quiet moment, Molly made three small snowballs and began juggling them. Chris and David made their own set of snowy juggling balls and while the gang sang _God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen_ the three of them put on a little juggling show, throwing snowballs between them, until Chris threw his snowballs in David’s face and they had a mini snowball fight.

Towards the end, Sherlock snuck in a few bars of _Fairytale of New York_ , making Violet giggle. Greg gave him a warning look, but then Mary took up the refrain, her eyes twinkling at John, and next thing, Molly and Greg had given up and were singing the lead vocals together with huge enthusiasm.

They moved towards the finish on _Feliz Navidad_ , vocals led by Sherlock and Nirupa, who wasn’t a brilliant singer, but she could hold a tune and at least knew how to pronounce all the words.

Then they ended, as was traditional now, with _The Wexford Carol_.

Good nights and Merry Christmases were exchanged with all the neighbours, and the carollers went home to port and Mrs Hudson’s patented get-drunk-on-a-whiff-of-it Christmas pudding.

Sitting in the taxi on the way home, Violet curled up asleep in his lap, Sherlock leaned his forehead against the window and looked out on London. At the other end of the seat, John and Mary sat close and giggled like teenagers. _Idiots_ , he thought fondly, then scowled at himself for being sentimental. Then Violet wriggled in his lap, scrunching in closer to him, face burrowed into his chest. He dropped a kiss onto her forehead and rubbed his cheek against her hair.

He let his mind go blank for a moment, and then a chant welled out of his memory, filling up his brain.

 _Sherlock Holmes and Greg Lestrade_  
were running down the street  
looking for a burg-a-lar and  
who should they meet?

_Damn._

He was going to _kill_ Tad Anderson.

 


End file.
